“Why?” I croaked.
“Because Dante wants you awake and alert.”
My eyes quickly scanned the area. It was just the two of us. Dante wasn’t here. But I felt him. Like a malevolent ooze that stifled the air, threatening to appear at any moment.
“He wants me awake and alert…for what comes next?”
The man nodded, his brown eyes somber.
“Help me,” I whispered.
He shook his head.
“He’ll break me. Until there’s nothing left. And then he’ll kill me,” I said.
“There are some things worse than death, no?”
Like your last moments on this earth, filled with agony and torture.
I’d diagnosed several patients whose last few months were nothing but pain. Death had been a relief, a blessing for them.
I closed my eyes briefly. This would eventually end for me. He’d take my life, and I’d be released.
The faint buzzing sound of a machine turned my attention. I heard the wooden door of the building slam open and then a moment later the noise grew louder. Dante loomed in the doorway of the jail cell holding an idling chainsaw that dripped blood onto the stone floor.
I gulped.
The doctor removed the cup from my lips and slowly released me. He stood up and hastened to the corner behind Dante.
This was it. The moment I was going to die.
Sawn in half like a magician’s assistant, only there would be no magic to put me back together. My organs ripped through with metal teeth. Jagged suffering as my bones cracked and my muscles tore. My insides sprayed on the walls, so the next victim to come after me could wonder about her own fate.
“Bruno angered me,” Dante explained with a casual grin. He turned off the chainsaw and set it on the floor. “You didn’t think I was really going to use it on you, did you, Princess? No. That would have ended our funfartoo soon.”
He turned his head to address the doctor. “Well? How is she?”
The doctor’s face was ashen. “I’ve tended to her wounds as best I can. And she’s heavily medicated as well as sedated.”
I looked at the sunlight coming in through the iron bars of the window. I had no idea how long I’d been passed out.
I briefly closed my eyes, willing myself to endure, willing myself to hold on to whatever remained of my sanity by the time this was over.
When I died, I still wanted there to be something of myself that Dante never managed to break.
“Help her up,” Dante commanded.
When the doctor was sure I could stand on my own, he released me.
“You can go now,” Dante told him. “Wait outside. I’ll call you again when I need you.”
The doctor didn’t even look at me as he left.
At some point while I had been passed out, the table and chair had been removed from the jail cell. Placed up against the wall was a six-foot-tall St. Andrew’s cross. Four leather cuffs were nailed to the wooden planks.
Dante approached me, and I shrank in fear. He took my elbow and walked me to the cross. I tried to fight, to resist, but my limbs refused to obey my edicts.
The sedative.